Venomous Lumpsucker

By: Ned Beauman

Narrated by: John Hastings

The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it's all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we're never getting them back.

Karin Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with one species in particular: the venomous lumpsucker, a small, ugly bottom-feeder that happens to be the most intelligent fish on the planet. Resaint is an animal cognition scientist consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature. Halyard is an exec from the extinction industry, complicit in the mining operation that destroyed the lumpsucker's last-known habitat.

Across the dystopian landscapes of the 2030s—a nature reserve full of toxic waste, a floating city on the ocean, the hinterlands of a totalitarian state—Resaint and Halyard hunt for a surviving lumpsucker. And the further they go, the deeper they're drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was really behind it? And why would anyone do such a thing?

©2022 Ned Beauman (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Wonderful imagination and characters.

A most enjoyable book with great characters and a fascinating story. Highly recommended!Listen and enjoy.

They call it fiction

It stressed me out and made me laugh- I need more words...umm, The accents are fun.

Original take of implausible scenario

Interesting view on human impact on nature. Little sad and irrational but it’s human condition I guess. Good read!

A delicious fictional romp through the philosophical questions related to human impacts on the planet.

The author has done a wonderful job creating characters which allow us to examine issues related to human impact on the planet. Really first rate. And funny!

good

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